In one of the previous lessons I started talking about quartal harmony, that is a harmony based on intervals of fourth instead of thirds (as it is in triads). Now I’d like to examine these chords, finding their fingerings on the guitar. Before going further, let’s remember that four notes, each one placed a fourth …
The Diminished Scale If you are trying to move further the pentatonic and diatonic scales and experimenting with “other sounds”, the diminished scale will give you some interesting material to work with. Building the Scale The diminished scale, also called octatonic, is a symmetrical scale. The name diminished tells us that it is built on …
7(b9) & 7(#9) Arpeggios After talking about Dominant chords and 9 chords, let’s see how we can spice things up a little bit by using altered ninth arpeggios. If we deal with Dominant chords, basic alterations are those of the 5th and 9th. Since the Dominant chord is built on the V degree of the …
Modal Chords If I go back and think about the first years of my guitar studies, I have to admit that I found studying chords boring. It was that boring moment between a solo and the next. I think in that period I was lacking the right perspective and, even more, someone making me understand …
Triads Triads are the building blocks of the tonal system of the Major and minor scales. The name “triad” tells us right away that they’re made of three notes. These can’t be any tone we want but, from a fundamental sound we need its 3rd and 5th. Since every interval is defined by a number and …
“Modal” Pentatonics Is It a Scale or an Arpeggio? Let’s say you are playing the notes A-C-D-E-G, I’m pretty sure you’d say without a doubt that you’re in the scale of Am pentatonic. Piece of cake! Even so, have you ever thought of these five notes as an arpeggio? In this case we could re-order …
Suspended Triads … Being Suspended … While studying a new song or a new harmonic progression, at some point you could have come across sus2 or sus4 chord symbols. Well, if you are asking yourself what these chords are, the answer is: suspended chords (in fact, “sus” is short for suspended). As we all know, …
What Is Quartal Harmony? When we talk about triads we usually refer to chords made by a fundamental note (or root), its third and its fifth. This type of chords is the building block of tonal harmony, whose birth and development was historically influenced by the idea of considering these “harmonic formations” on their own, …
